Worldless
by Zahar
Summary: After coming back from the past in TTP, someone else came along with them but didn't make it to the present. Until now.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: english is not my first language and I have never written a big text before, so if ****any beta finds the story interesting (which should start being by the next chapter) and has some spare time, I'd like to have some help.**

**The story contains**** a few**** original characters by me that I thought they would fit well in the universe of AF for a single adventure.**

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**Chapter 1: The Cradle of Nowhere**

A big, black pond of dark mass, seemingly as dense as a soup, lies in a granite rock in the middle of Nowhere. It keeps whirling back and forth, without any identifiable pattern, and sometimes, something can be seen floating there: a mass of organs and bones. That is what the Worldless calls a 'newborn'.

The Nowhere is a place between worlds, where everything is unbound of rules and pretty much of everything too. There is no air, ground or gravity to sustain anything, yet things walk and breath in there. A little orb shines from its center to serve as the only light source, and millions of shadows from the worlds, that wave around spiraling towards the core as is they were huge tentacles coming from a lovecraftian demigod fill the borders of this place. With a naked eye, one could say there is absolutely nothing to see there except the core's light.

The only thing in that place that has a meaning, a name and real mass is the Cradle, a pool of concentrated shadows over a pyramidal granite rock. It received this name because it is the place where all the Worldless, the inhabitants of Nowhere, are born, or, as they like to say, they awaken.

The Worldless. Also known as wraiths or even reapers on the other worlds, are special creatures: they are the embodiment of a strong will which right of living was denied, that comes back for reckoning. There are many ways to "create" a Worldless, but the most common one comes from failed magical experiments involving the duplication of humanoid souls in magic-driven worlds, by wizards who wants to increase their lifespan. There is a rule about existing in a world: you can be only one. That means there cannot exist two of you at the same time, your world only gives you a single "life-ticket". If another of you suddenly appears, it is denied from its living rights, and if its willpower is strong, it becomes a Worldless.

Not that it is any good, though. Its existence is accursed: the lack of a life spark in them generates a very strong resentment against their living selves, turning them into desperate vengeful spirits, whose only purpose is to prive their living selves from their lives too. And after they achieve this goal, they fade away, like a shadow that is bathed by light.

Recently, some events in a not so magic-driven world resulted in the birth of a new Worldless: a man and a woman traveled to the past to save someone from their present, but on the way back, they bought along the man's past self. Although things worked out in the end, something was overlooked: when bringing the man's past self to the present, the time tunnel had to compensate for the woman too, like a scale that needs a counterweight. The only way to do that was to duplicate her existence within the tunnel, but inevitably discarding it when they arrived on their time. That discarded material disintegrated and, after a short while, recomposed itself in the Cradle's black pool, as a huge mess of overlapped and twisted organs and bones.

The only way for a Worldless to "awaken" to its new existence is by being helped by another Worldless, that pulls them from the Cradle, like a fisherman pulls a fish from the water, and then helps it remember who it was as well as what caused it to become another accursed being, thus igniting their will. The process is much like a metamorphosis, as its initial state is hardly recognizeable as a humanoid.

And it is about to happen.

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**A/N: No, I didn't forget about Jayjay. It's just that animals like him do not come back at all. By the way, the next chapters will be longer.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: chapters 1 and 2 were actually only 1 chapter in my original project, but since they seemed too long, I decided to split. Chapter 3 is on the making, though, so the update will take a while.**

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**Chapter 2: Awakening**

Jake Holman, a 1 year old Worldless, was waiting by the pool.

The Worldless feel when a newborn is coming, and are involuntarily attracted to the Cradle in order to take it out for its first steps. Like all of the others in that forgotten corner of the universe, he was wearing his shadow over his body, which looked like a ragged black mantle, barely leaving his mouth and chin exposed. Through the hood of the mantle, it is possible to see the bright light that comes from his eyes: the mark of the Worldless.

After a long sigh, he turned around and inserted his arm into the pond. He grabbed what felt like a faintly pulsating heart, and with his other arm he pulled along all sorts of parts that were weaved within each other. Certainly a disgusting and ugly sight, as he dragged that barely recognizable mess of organs and bones out of the pond and dragged over the granite rock for a few inches, leaving it there in a pool of its own blood.

He thought at the moment 'why are all newborns so damn ugly?' but his expression didn't change at all. He felt somewhat proud, though.

He walked a few steps back, thinking about how to proceed. Just because something you need to do is induced by instinct, doesn't mean you actually know how to do it. He stepped closer to the newborn and sit by its side, looking at it. In a few minutes, it would become someone just like him. In a few minutes, someone's life was going to be endangered. He smiled at that thought.

That mess of intertwined organs kept pulsating in irregular intervals. It was sentient: it could feel the cold touch of the stranger grabbing it from the pool of shadows, as well as the excruciating pain of being dragged away from the shadows and over the rugged rock, but it couldn't complain, nor react to the intrusion. It was like being literally pulled out from its mother's womb by sheer strength. It was still pulsating, but it didn't know why. It didn't know anything at all except pain.

"Who are you?" Jake began, his voice could be heard clearly even though there was no air for the sound to propagate in. These little physics details had little to no meaning in the Nowhere. "Do you remember who you were?" He spoke slowly and with pauses, to make sure it would understand the question clearly.

The organs' conscience, or the little amount of synapses their brain could process became surprised. It heard something, something it could understand! It was a question, so, it had to be answered, it thought, and started to search in its memories. But it was useless: the pain and confusion that creature was feeling was so intense it couldn't piece its memories together. It became anxious due to the lack of an answer, and started to pulsate a bit quicker. The pain was growing.

'Shit' the adult worldless thought. 'I guess I should have asked something more specific… I wish I remembered what Dhak' ar asked me…' Dhak' ar was the worldless who awakened Jake. He perished 6 months ago by completing his task.

He thought quickly about the next question he was going to make. The increasingly faster pulsations of the newborn were making him nervous too. Suddenly, he came up with something "Okay, let's try something different: try to remember how you were! Like, your hair, what was it's color? Your race? What was you? Does any of this rings a bell?"

"How was I like…?" it thought, but nothing came into mind. A minute had passed, and he asked again "Come on… right, let's start with something even more basic: were you a male or a female?"

Now, it remembered 'I was… a woman.' That said, the organs actually moved a little bit, as if they were trying to reorganize themselves in order to build up an humanoid being. "Ahh, finally! Now, don't distract yourself, one thing leads to another" he was smiling again. "Now that you remember you gender, you can remember more about yourself, can't you? Haven't you ever looked at yourself in the mirror? Do you recall something like that?"

She started to move more vigorously, as her memories started flowing back to her. Little by little, pieces of information about herself started linking in her brain, and with that, all that mess of bones and organs started to get in place. "I was an elf… not very tall… my hair was auburn… my skin was dark…" After a couple of minutes, she finally became something more or less humanoid, doing some final touches such as smoothing the skin and finishing growing hair and nails. It was still in pain, though. Something was amiss.

The reconstitution of one's body doesn't come dressed. Needless to say, it was like she was born again, but as an adult.

Jake spent a few seconds scanning her. He didn't expect the newborn to be a woman (although the majority of the worldless are women), much less a "hottie elven midget". For a moment he actually blushed, though it wasn't noticeable due to his hood. When he snapped out of it, he bended over her and put his hand on her shadow. He closed his hand and pulled it off the ground, as if it was a black mantle, and covered her. "Hey, guess what: you're hot, and gorgeous as well!" the worldless praised her with a smile, trying to make up for the wasted seconds due to his surprise "Now, how are you feeling?" Though he could tell from her frowning face that she was in pain, he asked anyway.

"It… it hurts…" was the answer, that came in a painful whisper. Although she remembered her physical appearance, there was still no memory of who she was. There was still work to be done here. Jake cleared his throat and proceeded with a more serious tone "Right, let's get rid of that now. You have to remember more stuff." He pinched his nose bridge and closed the eyes, taking a moment to think about what to ask. It was his first time doing that, and he wasn't good with social interactions. "Uh, how about… what was your favorite food?" The answer was a shy moan, which probably meant she didn't remember that, although it seemed to him to be a pretty important thing to recall. "Okay, then… what about… your parents! Yeah, do you remember them? Mom? Dad?"

Again, a faint response. All this thing about helping a newborn getting its memory back consisted in asking about key things, that would trigger recent and strong memories. If she didn't react to the question about her parents, it could mean she was fed up with them, or they were gone long ago.

He looked upwards and sighed, then looked back to her "So… your job, maybe? Do you remember that? What you used to do for a living?" Another little moan. "Geez… boyfriend maybe?" She seemed to convulse a bit after this question. "Oh, touchy subject, sorry. Um… did I ask for favorite food already? I guess I did. What about friends? Anybody you liked a lot, that you could put your hand on fire for them?"

Jackpot. The first person that came to her mind was Artemis Fowl. After that, everything went flooding back into her head, making her new body arc and her eyes open wide, revealing little blue and hazel lights from the iris. Foaly, Vinyaya, Trouble, Butler, Mulch, everybody, she was remembering! And along with that, the moments they spent together, which helped her reconstruct her memories about her previous life. She suddenly stopped, and was breathing heavily from the effort.

'Almost finished' Jake thought 'now comes the hard part…' There was no air around to breathe on, and the woman just realized that as she was trying to fill her lungs and nothing seemed to come to her. She was choking, and her face could show the despair growing. The man quickly grabbed her and shook her. She looked at him and grabbed him with all her strength, pleading for help with her horrified expression. She could only see the light of his eyes, everything else was darkness. "Quickly, last question! Why are you here?! What was the last thing that happened to you?! Who did this to you?!"

That was more than one question, but that is how it is. This final part of the process starts when the newborn fully regains the consciousness that it was a living being. Since there is no air or pressure in the Nowhere, the newborn would have to find its will to live under a few seconds before it dies. A bit traumatizing, but the shock would be enough to stabilize the person. Once it regains its will, it refuses to die until it is fulfilled.

She began to search desperately within her memory. She didn't knew why she was here, nor who did that to her (she didn't even knew something happened in the first place!) but about the last question, she remembered something: the time tunnel. She remembered she was there, traveling back, with Artemis Fowl, both the younger and older versions of him, the lemur, Jayjay and… herself. How could she feel herself there, and still know it wasn't she? Then she remembered that as they got out of the tunnel, she remained there, alone, and in her incredulity, her particles began to fade away from her, until she lost consciousness. Or, at least, she thought she did. That mix of feelings about being abandoned, feeling an irrational anger towards herself, as if the other she stole her passage back into her world, and lots of other things stopped her from simply disintegrating. No, she couldn't simply fade away like that. And now, she was in Nowhere.

She looked right at Jake's face, or at least the portion that could be seen, with her eyes wide open. She stopped trying to breath, and that was a good sign: she managed to regain her will. They stood together like that for a moment, their faces close to each other. She felt a little spark of gratitude, but not more than that. She was now filled with hate, the prime emotion that fuels all worldless, that keeps them alive and focus them towards their objective: to kill the one who made her become like that. Kill Holly.

"Can you get up?" the man asked. The answer came between her teeth with a most indignated voice "of course" and he pulled her upwards. Besides the big height difference, they looked just like each other, both with a ragged black mantle covering them from head to feet.

Now she could see clearly: despite the lack of a stronger light in the Nowhere, its inhabitants could see everything like it was bathed by a direct light. Of course, everybody there was wearing the black mantle, and the horizon, as well as everywhere else, was filled with waving shadows. But now she could discern its elements, and could see hundreds, thousands of worldless standing in the middle of the space, and strangely, she felt at home.

Think about the Nowhere as an inverted world: the core of the planet is the faint light at the center, and what should be the surface is an endless sea of shadows seen from the inside.

Jake walked away from her, until the border of the Cradle, which floats close to the core. The granite rock they were on was shaped like an upside-down pyramid, from their point of view, of course. He reached an inner pocket and bought out a pack of cigarettes, and pulled one off. He lit it with his fingers and started smoking. Again, no rules against smoking in an airless place. Good for him, as his addiction persevered into his worldless self. He turned back to the newborn "Welcome to Nowhere, your new home."

She glared at him for telling her what she already knows. Once a worldless regains its will, some information is imprinted to them, like an instinct. Things about what their willpower can do for them, their "undead" status, how to travel through the shadows, bend rules, meditate to heal, etc. "Thank you for stating the obvious," she replied coldly.

The man in front of her chuckled "name's Jake, newbie. What's yours?"

Worldless choose their own names. As a reaction to their hate against their living selves, they abandon that name and choose a new one with meaning. Pain, suffering, vengeance, death, and try to mix with something also meaningful to their former names, so they become unique. Dhak' ar, for example, was the name of an ancient demon who murdered the family of the former wizard Astrides Mettel years ago. His worldless used the name of the demon to inspire fear on him.

Jake, on the other hand, uses the same name as he had in life. He is a reborn worldless, one whose living self is already dead. For this reason, his target is not himself, but the person who robbed his life spark for its own wicked needs, leaving a lifeless but vengeful shell behind. A reborn worldless always uses its former name and is more powerful than the regular one, to compensate the lack of knowledge about the enemy.

The newborn had to think about it for a moment. Her former name was Holly, and the mere thought of the name made her blood boil. She is now something else, something designed only to hurt and murder. Hurt. She looked at his eyes and answered "My name is Thorn."

They both grinned.

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**A/N: apologies in advance for grammatical errors. Reviews are always welcome!**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I'm not sure if I managed to get the characters sounding at least a bit IC. Either way, I was eager to put this on. I'm looking foward for reviews, especially constructive ones since I feel I commited more mistakes than the acceptable.**

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**Chapter 3: First Steps**

The sea of shadows. Although it is hundreds of kilometers away from the core of Nowhere, distance is another rule that can be broken easily there. By simply walking, a worldless can cross the entire plane in two steps. The shadows that wave like tentacles come from other worlds, and serve as a gateway to them. And every worldless knows the way to wherever they want to go, always landing on a shadow of that world.

The process of traveling through the shadows is called diving, because when you're inside the web of shadows of a world, you feel like you're underwater. Anything that you see from them seems blurred and ondulating, and when you finally emerge from them, you feel wet and cold, even though you are not. Besides that, diving is quite pleasurable, like a mother's embrace. This strengthens the belief that the worldless are creatures made and born of shadows.

Jake and Thorn were standing side by side by the edge of the cradle. They stayed like that for a few minutes, staring at the nothingness of their homeworld, completely silent. She was using the time to plan ahead the execution of her target, which admittedly, wasn't going to be hard. She is a LEP officer, which means she follows a pretty strict routine. There are plenty of opportunities for her to be caught off her guard.

She imagined herself walking slowly into Holly's direction, her face showing fear unlike any other she has ever felt. Death would never be enough for her; she had to suffer. So Thorn grabbed her quarry by the neck, and with her other hand, grabbed her arm. She pulled her arm off in a very painful way, and before that bitch even had time to cry, she started spanking her with her own limb until-

"So, how's the plan coming along?" He asked, after noticing she was smiling gleefully. His words interrupted her fantasies, and made her frown immediately in utter dissatisfaction. She closed her eyes for a moment, holding the urge to spank him, and opened them "I don't need a plan. She's a sitting duck."

He chuckled "Well, I'd like to see that!"

"Too bad you won't. Mind your own business," and she threw herself from the cradle. Like a bird that jumps from its nest for the first time in the life, but she knew exactly what to do. She knew which shadows would take her to her world, and by channeling her will, she created a gravity field around herself that accelerated her towards a specific section of the sea, where she delved into.

Jake was left behind. Worldless are solitary creatures, and there's little space in their broken hearts for anything other than hate. For this reason, they rarely establish bonds of partnership (but mainly due to the lack of a common objective), and never become friends with each other. They do chat sometimes, though. "Just like someone I know…" He said to himself. He finished his cigar and delved at the same shadows as the elf did.

Thorn was swimming through the web of shadows of her world. She was aiming for Holly's apartment in Haven. The trip was relaxing, and she saw all sorts of things from the shadows: a mudman pub, where a lot of big fat road bikers were messing around, a goblin meeting in a dark warehouse in the outskirts of haven, a mudman couple having sex in their bedroom and a few dwarves having a toast to celebrate the completion of a rather large tunnel. The web of shadows really don't have a straight line to somewhere…

She arrived in the house around 12 o' clock. Holly wasn't home. She stretched her hand out of the shadows at the corner of the sofa, which made them crack like a broken mirror, and slowly she pulled herself out of the shadows. The little shards of shadows she broke quickly rearranged themselves in order to close her passageway.

The room was dark, and the only light sources were the windows, from which the solar panels could be seen clearly at the top of the city. Thorn didn't feel so well by looking directly at the light. She wandered directly to the bedroom, where she could "borrow" a few things. First of all, clothes. She was still naked, her shadow was once again sticking to the ground. She could grab it at any moment to cover her, but outside Nowhere, that would require some effort on her part. She was saving her energies for the right moment. She quickly dressed a LEP bodysuit and then reached for the drawers under her bed. Hidden among some pajamas, there was a Neutrino 3000, which she quickly holstered.

"Nice gun," someone said by the door. She immediately turned around and shot, but the lucky peeping tom managed to take cover behind the door. "Whoa, calm down, will ya? It's me!" The figure said while coming out of the cover, hands up. Of course it had to be Jake; what other human would be able to enter that place at this time of the day? Speaking about human, now he really looked like one, without his shadow over him.

He seemed wet, which means he just arrived. His short brown hair was all messy, as if a monkey had combed him. He was wearing a sleeveless blue shirt along with black jeans and shoes, and had sunglasses on his face. Even for a human, he seemed pretty slim, although a bit muscular.

"Don't do that again," she said while holstering her gun, and turning back to search for more useful gadgets.

"Hell, I won't, I'm not suicidal," he mocked.

"But you're acting like you have a deathwish." Her expression was still serious, although what she said could be considered a rather good joke for some worldless. "Why are you here, anyway? Don't you have other stuff to-"

"I thought it wouldn't hurt to give you a few hints before you start causing trouble. Did you at least stop to check yourself on the mirror?"

Before she answered him in a rude way for caring about vanity at a time like this, she instinctively looked at the nearest mirror, that was on the wardrobe's door. He had a point: her eyes are almost as shiny as a pair of incandescent lamps. She would need something to cover that, something like… sunglasses.

Since they live in the underground, fairies have no need for those accessories, so her only option would be to wear a LEP helmet full-time, which was plain silly.

She looked back at him shyly, but didn't say anything. Instead, she resumed her search for more useful apparel. He interpreted her look as thanks, and grinned.

Without much effort, she found a locator, an electric baton and a helmet. She turned off its locating systems before leaving to the station plaza "Don't you dare to step outside. We're in Haven city, there are no humans here, and you'll cause a huge fuss if you are seen around," she warned him before crossing the door.

Jake had to walk around the apartment a bit curved due to his height. Looking through the window, he noticed the exquisite architecture of Haven, as well as another detail that surprised him "What the hell..? We're underground?!"

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**At the surface…**

Fortunately for Holly, she wasn't in Haven at that moment. The full moon was shining brightly over the irish sky, and since she had to replenish her magic, she traveled there off-duty to perform the ritual and visit a good friend, which she was calling right now "Arty?"

"Yes, Holly? Where are you?" Artemis answered through his communicator. Since they came back from the past, they have been working together to track down the fugitive Opal, who was proving to be extremely sneaky. The other one was still rotting in prison, for everybody's sake.

"I'm flying over the ocean, almost at the Irish coast. Gotta perform the ritual today, and I thought you wouldn't mind if I dropped by to search for any illegal activities you've been working on." She teased him. Once a criminal, always a criminal.

"Telling me of your intentions is not going to guarantee the success in your mission, captain Short. It's quite the opposite, since now that I know it, I'm getting rid of all the proofs that would incriminate me," he answered in the same playful tone.

She smiled "Then I guess I'll have to mesmer you until you tell me everything, mud boy"

"I still have my glasses."

"I'll take them off you!"

"I'd like to see you try with Butler by my side."

"Piece of cake, I'm sure he wouldn't try to stop me!"

He looked at his bodyguard, who seemed to be quite amused with the dialogue. Even though he could only hear Artemis' side of the conversation, it wasn't hard to deduce what Holly was saying. "Very well," the Irish boy continued "I concede. Perhaps you would like to have some tea while you're here as well?"

"Of course! I'll arrive there in 20 minutes." That said, she turned off the communicator.

The mud boy gave a brief chuckle over that completely useless, yet amusing chat, then looked again at Butler, eyebrows raised.

"Okay." he immediately answered, and left the room to make the said drink.

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**Back to Haven…**

Thorn had just arrived at the Station Plaza when she realized her mistake: she was so eager to find and kill Holly that she didn't think about how things could go wrong there: her enemy could identify her and throw the LEP forces against her, or the commander could ask for her presence and notice her strange eyes, or even Foaly could notice two Hollys walking around the station on his many screens.

Oh well, better do what she does best: improvise. Having nothing to lose, she headed directly to Foaly's lab.

"Hey Foaly! It's me!" Someone said outside the door. There are only two ways to get into the centaur's laboratory: the first one is having his DNA, which he used as his own key to enter, and the second way was by opening the door from inside. He looked at the outside camera's screen and saw it was captain Short. 'Weird, I thought she was still at the surface. Time sure does fly while I'm concentrated…' and opened the door.

"You know the station is pretty safe already, do you really need to shut yourself from the outside world?" She asked in a deceitfully gentle voice while walking inside.

"Oh, please, you know how I am. And the last time people said I was paranoid, we had the Bwa'kell revolution." He finally turned away from the wall of screens to face his friend. "So, how's our favorite mud boy doing?"

"Excuse me?"

He frowned. "What? You forgot to pay him a visit? That's cruel!"

"Oh no, sorry, of course I went over his place," she tried to elude him "my head's still shaking from the landing, you know..." She smiled shyly.

"Ah, I see. I thought you would be used to it after all those years, but I guess it's not something that gets old, eh?" He turned back to the screens "I forgot, Fowl was going to send me a few results of his research today, they should have arrived by now." At this moment, he saw the clock. 12:30, the time Holly should be arriving at the Fowl manor. He let out "Wait a second Holly, it's 12:30 now, what are you doing here?" He turned around again, only to find a neutrino pointed at his nose.

"Meeting at the Fowl Manor at 12:30, uh?" She grinned "I knew I could count on you!" And she pulled the trigger. The intensity of the gun was adjusted to the non-lethal one, so the centaur just fell unconscious to the ground. She still had feelings for Holly's friends, so she wasn't going to kill anyone unless extremely necessary.

She turned off the lights in the laboratory and delved into the newly created shadows, speeding towards the manor.

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**A/N: Many thanks to The One Called Demetra, for pointing out specific mistakes that I already took care of!**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Many, MANY thanks to Demetra for helping improve the quality of this fic by becoming my beta!**

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**Chapter 4: Unleashed Rage**

Thorn arrived successfully at Fowl Manor. Again, she emerged by crackling shadows, outside, right by the service door. 'Couldn't be easier…' She thought, and concentrated to vibrate to sneak in unseen. It was right on that moment that reality struck her hard: she had no magic.

'What?! H-how can this be?!' She was talking to herself while looking to her own hands. She tried to emit some magical signal, spark, anything, but it was useless. The power of the People's magic comes from life itself, and as she wasn't alive anymore, hers simply disappeared. For a moment feelings of desperation due to the great loss, as well as anger for knowing that Holly is the reason she lost her magic, took over her, fueling her hate.

Her hand clenched, drawing some blood. 'Holly will pay for this…' She reached the manor's shadows and entered them once again, but this time, she just wandered around the same spot, looking at its rooms from the many dark spots produced by the furniture, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Holly and Artemis were finishing their tea while talking about day to day stuff. If she still had some magic, she could mesmerize Butler and make up some excuse to separate those two. The bodyguard was at the kitchen, getting the dinner ready, so she only had to get rid of the mud boy. But as if he read her mind, he got up and went upstairs, leaving Holly alone.

Perfect. She waited a few more seconds before beginning.

"Ho-lly…" the sweet voice was heard in the room. The elf was startled and quickly got on her feet. She looked around, but couldn't find anyone. Well, that mansion always creeped her out, and she never stayed alone in a room there. Maybe she was imagining things. She lifted her arms and stretched a bit, closing her eyes, and relaxed. She could use a vacation.

When she opened her eyes, someone was right in front of her. Someone who looked just like her. Thorn was smiling widely and the shine in her eyes reflected a bit on Holly's face, and before the elf could act, she grabbed her by the neck and lifted. "What's the matter, captain? Don't you recognize me? Don't you recognize… yourself?"

Holly reacted quickly. Using her legs she managed to kick that imposter right on she chin, forcing her to free her. She landed with her back on the ground as the worldless staggered backwards. Holly quickly drew her gun but as soon as she got her targeted, she kicked her neutrino away and afterwards, her face. "It's no use, I know every movement you'll make!"

Magical sparks were already repairing the damage. Thorn glared at her. "Magic! You bitch, because of you, I don't have it anymore! You robbed me of my magic!" She pulled Holly upwards and punched her twice in the stomach, and before she could react, held the back of her head and smashed her face against the corner of a beautiful and solid wooden cabinet, leaving her to fall to the ground. The worldless was absolutely euphoric about this situation.

Thorngrabbed Holly by her hair and pulled up. She was still trying to breathe, especially after the last hit which broke her nose, but managed to let out a faint whine. Her senses started to get numb. "And now… I'll make it even for us both! You robbed me of my life, and I'll do the same to you!" She let go of her head, which hit the floor hard, finally knocking her out and drew out her gun. Before she could put an end to it once and for all, someone came through the door and shot her thrice, hitting her on the left shoulder and arm and left leg, making her fall to the ground. It was Butler, and Artemis was right behind him.

"Whoever you are, imposter, bear in mind of security cameras inside the place you're going to try and murder someone. And more importantly: do it faster," the Irish boy said. They were still walking over to her, and when Thorn tried to point the gun to Butler, he shot her hand, disarming her. "We need her alive, Butler" Artemis said while reaching Holly and pulling her away.

'No!' Thorn thought 'It can't… it can't end like this! I was so… close…' She tried to move, but her wounded limbs didn't obey her. The pain was settling in, and she couldn't do anything.

"Drop your weapon," the worldless who had just entered the room and was standing between Butler and Thorn said. He had his shadow on, making him look quite menacing. "Or people will get hurt." The bodyguard didn't have to think to act in this situation: the new person was in melee range, so the best alternative was to neutralize him and ask questions later. He moved in to immobilize him, but his arms went through him as if he was some kind of ghost. Then he noticed his glowing blue eyes. "Wrong move," Jake said, and moved to the side, grabbing Butler's arm and pulling it towards Thorn. The giant Eurasian was already unbalanced due to the failed immobilization attempt, and his weight accompanied Jake's pull, that suddenly pulled him upwards and grabbed his face, pushing towards the back and to the ground, making him hit the floor violently. To make sure he wouldn't cause more trouble, Jake kicked Butler with an abnormal strength, that sent him flying across the room and landing right over a cabinet, destroying it. He didn't get knocked unconscious though, but he surely broke a rib or two on the impact, making it painful to move.

Jake quickly turned around and took Thorn in his arms, leaving the room by jumping out the window and delving back to Nowhere through the mansion's shadow.

Artemis did not know who the person was and her reasons, but he was sure she was going to come back. For a moment he considered the possibility that she was Opal, but the pixie would never risk a direct confrontation. This was a new enemy, one that wouldn't stop until it took Holly's life.


End file.
